Paarl's local history archive

ghosts

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The volunteers at the Drakenstein Heemkring sometimes get rather odd queries, and by far the oddest was one in which two people wanted to look at our photographic collection in order to identify ghosts. More specifically, have a look at clothing in order to date the individual ghosts. We were extremely sceptical, but it soon became quite clear that the two young women knew their ghosts well enough to describe items of clothing in great detail. What was more, they did not only have one or two “visitors”, but possibly as many as twenty. Where was their farm-stall? we wanted to know, and they described one on the Wellington-Klapmuts road behind Paarl Mountain. The farm-stall it would seem, had been built on what may have been a 19th century graveyard.

One of the Drakenstein Heemkring‘s committee members has quite a number of stories about haunted houses in Paarl, but I thought I would document some ghost stories I picked up in some of the old Paarl Posts we have at the Heemkring.

The first was documented in the Paarl Post of 16 May, 1939 and told by Hugo Vercueil, who grew up on a farm in Agter-Paarl and a owned Klein Schuur in Paarl. In the article he told the reporter that growing up, the workers on his father’s farm always said that they would invariably hear a blood curling scream just before sunset a day or two before someone died. This Agter-Paarl farm was clearly haunted. Continue reading →